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Medical Alerts get help in burglaries and assaults

We think of medical alerts as devices to summon help in a medical emergency, or when we’ve fallen and can’t get up, but they can be used in different situations, too.

I recently heard of two situations where an elderly person used their medical alert to summon help when they were the victim of a crime.

In the first case, a woman used her medical alert when her grown daughter was apparently trying to strangle her after an argument about money. She pressed the button and the emergency operator sent the police (even though the daughter apparently tried to talk them out of coming). The medical alert might have saved this woman’s life.

In the second case, an elderly person activated their medical alarm system when they heard someone break into their home. The police came and the woman wasn’t hurt.

The first example speaks to the benefit of having a monitored personal emergency response system, instead of a system that just dials friends & family. That’s because with a monitored system you’re guaranteed to have a trained responder picking up the phone. Imagine if the senior woman had been waiting and waiting while her system dialed several friends and family, none of whom were available.